1.Bribe your way in every election
2.Have as many trade-port you can and update them.
3. Prey on the weak.
4. If something go wrong use your inifite many to hire mercs to save your ass.
That's it.
No. But you can do what Venice did historically instead. Constantly improve relations with HRE and Austria, so they don't frick you up. Quality fleet, wait for someone to frick up, then take their land. You are western tech, and you get naval tech advantage for your galleys, meaning you're stronger both on land and on sea than your targets. There's plenty of easy land to be had there. Mind that once you expand enough, main powers will start to take you seriously, so you'll need to be careful in next moves. HRE should becomes weak enough by this time and allow infighting amongst the members, so you'll have plenty of targets around you to establish some land holdings close at hand. Then you can do anything you wish. Unify Italy, go south into Austria and Hungary, Switzerland... Or if you're fast enough in early expansions, and know how to screw AI in the battle phase, you can just take over Byzantium completely and blob over whole middle east.
>You are western tech, and you get naval tech advantage for your galleys, meaning you're stronger both on land and on sea than your targets
sir, this is a crusader kings
If you're willing to go for ahistorical big power plays, what republics excel at is saving money, then claiming the HRE or the ERE, either by marrying a princess or by requesting the right to invade from the pope (HRE only), then spending all your savings on mercenaries to win the claim war.
A more historical path would be conquering islands or coastal counties from weak targets. In the base game, patricians can use the holy war CB to e.g. get north african land from muslims as an italian republic. Croatia is often a good target, so are the small iberian emirs in the 1066 start, and keep an eye on what you can snatch from the black sea.
Sadly, republics tend to be boring once you've built everything, and given their massive income, it doesn't take very long.
>Jew
Only a israeli culture, Khazar in particular is great since it can invade, raid and gets the special israeli Silk Road buildings. Better to be a Muslim religiously. You get your holy wars for expansion, polygamy for tons of sons and merchant republics don’t get decadence.
Yazidi in particular is great if you can manage it, since if you can become the Sheik you can just excommunicate your enemies on top of the normal Muslim benefits.
Of course, being Catholic can let you more easily play the Pope colonization game, which can be fun and very powerful.
Starting as a Catholic Khazar and later converting up Yazidi through a holy site once you get the dynastic popes self-sufficient might be interesting.
Merchant Port is more valuable than Merchant Enclave, I think. It probably doesn't really matter that much though. Just build the dumb trade posts and you make money
Click on a coastal county in diplo range that you can access via water from your capital. It's in the additional holdings tab, the same place as hospitals. If one's already built, obviously you cannot build a new one.
Spam posts
Spam cities
Buy mercs
Buy every election win
It's the single most braindead government form to play in CK2
This.
Literally the only nuance is the number of male dynasty members in your court. The more you have, the higher the trade post cap. But the more you have, then more you have to split income.
The solution is to keep a small number until you upgrade your mansion and trade practices tech. Then shit out as many possible and built like 30-ish trade posts. Then crop the dynasty tightly so all that income is only being split 3-4 ways max.
Merchant Port is more valuable than Merchant Enclave, I think. It probably doesn't really matter that much though. Just build the dumb trade posts and you make money
always keep every other major house head dead/imprison, this is trivial with intrigue focus which should always be on until every head is dead/in jail/a minor. When House morono is led by a 2 year old with no heirs then switch to Business/Rulership or do learning to bloatmaxx your stats with Hermetics
Do not kill the last noble house lead unless your position is strong because the AI generates a replacement house with more heirs you'll have to play Whack-a-Mole with
All of CK2 is brain-dead. And so is 3. The point is about having merchant republics or at least being able to play as a republic, period, rather than "nu-uh, not this time", except in 3-5 years they are going to shit out some horrendous DLC that's going to break the game in five different ways.
Trade routes and merchant republics can be fun, even when you aren’t playing as one yourself. Hopefully they do update CK3 to have something along those lines eventually, though until then at least there are mods.
CK2 always annoyed me due to moronic idea that every city state = Venice and that you MUST be at the very least a duke to pull this in the first place. It was so fricking arbitrary and so naval centric... what if you want to play a fricking imperial city, then? Or just a city-state from any place that wasn't coastal Italy?
this, look how hard eu4 devs have tried to make naval work for the past decade and failed. even hoi4 fails at doing naval combat right (albeit that game SHOULD have it in, time to pay another $20 down the line in a few years paradrones for us to rework it AGAIN). crusader kings doesn't need naval combat, but it does need boats, no magic "embark" like ck3
Turns out it is outrageously boring and easy. Every problem is solved by infinite money and mercs. You only concern is forgetting to put money into elections which are dumb and stupid. I hated that gameplay.
>You only concern is forgetting to put money into elections
How the frick are you this bad at CK2? No matter who you're playing the "you are going to lose titles when you die" notification is the second most urgent to "no heir of your dynasty"
there are so many people I've seen complain over the years about their government type not knowing that it lets you own cities. that's so absurdly broken because you basically get infinite money for mercenaries
Imperial has some annoying restrictions but being able to hold cities lets you just throw money around and buy out any problem.
I somewhat prefer Chinese Imperial. Not being able to demand conversion or use religious mandate is a shame but ignoring religion opinion penalties even for marriage is stellar, they make particularly good Muslims since then you can more securely keep Jizya on all the cities you own. It can get pretty boring though by the point you can do that.
>be Yazidi (Muslim heresy) >excommunicate all the other patricians as a secular ruler (Caliph) and you can imprison and execute for no penalty. do this to either exterminate their families or so that their families have a child as an heir. a child cannot become Doge >when you kill them and they're the last of their family left you have a chance of stealing their trade posts. as they are excommunicated no one cares >break the game
works the best on the silk road as either israeli religion, Israelite culture group, or Khazar culture. but you should get to the silk road asap anyway for infinite money
Just found my next campaign >start as Khazar Khanate >breed Sayyiid trait into my family while I still have matrilineal marriage >conquer Jerusalem and settle as a republic in the area >hold it long enough as a non-Muslim to trigger Jihads as it's one of their "oh shit our land is being taken" triggers (year 900+) >immediately become Yazidi Muslim off the holy site there >get their Caliphate title >break the game due to being able to excommunicate, having Jihads, having Radhanite trade posts, Jizya tax, and Khazar culture being able to raid
unfortunately I'm pretty sure you can't build trade posts in both oceans
You don’t actually need Sayyid to become the Yazidi sheik, you just need 1000 piety and to control Mossul. However you might as well grab Sayyid and some other bloodlines anyway while you still have religion ignoring matrilineal marriage shenanigans as a Nomad. >break the game due to being able to excommunicate, having Jihads, having Radhanite trade posts, Jizya tax, and Khazar culture being able to raid
Don’t forget polygamy for tons of children.
Just play, 90 percent of the fun is not knowing mechanics 100 percent so you have more varied playthroughs, I played the frick out of ck2 and every game goes the same now.
1.Bribe your way in every election
2.Have as many trade-port you can and update them.
3. Prey on the weak.
4. If something go wrong use your inifite many to hire mercs to save your ass.
That's it.
>3. Prey on the weak.
How? I'm surrounded by HRE Or is there a way to snatch provinces from them?
Sorry, I'm still new to the game.
Take provinces off of Croatia and southern Italians etc. Also just play the game and figure it out yourself moron
No. But you can do what Venice did historically instead. Constantly improve relations with HRE and Austria, so they don't frick you up. Quality fleet, wait for someone to frick up, then take their land. You are western tech, and you get naval tech advantage for your galleys, meaning you're stronger both on land and on sea than your targets. There's plenty of easy land to be had there. Mind that once you expand enough, main powers will start to take you seriously, so you'll need to be careful in next moves. HRE should becomes weak enough by this time and allow infighting amongst the members, so you'll have plenty of targets around you to establish some land holdings close at hand. Then you can do anything you wish. Unify Italy, go south into Austria and Hungary, Switzerland... Or if you're fast enough in early expansions, and know how to screw AI in the battle phase, you can just take over Byzantium completely and blob over whole middle east.
>You are western tech, and you get naval tech advantage for your galleys, meaning you're stronger both on land and on sea than your targets
sir, this is a crusader kings
Ah, right, install EU4 then.
If you're willing to go for ahistorical big power plays, what republics excel at is saving money, then claiming the HRE or the ERE, either by marrying a princess or by requesting the right to invade from the pope (HRE only), then spending all your savings on mercenaries to win the claim war.
A more historical path would be conquering islands or coastal counties from weak targets. In the base game, patricians can use the holy war CB to e.g. get north african land from muslims as an italian republic. Croatia is often a good target, so are the small iberian emirs in the 1066 start, and keep an eye on what you can snatch from the black sea.
Sadly, republics tend to be boring once you've built everything, and given their massive income, it doesn't take very long.
Make your ruler a israelite
>Jew
Only a israeli culture, Khazar in particular is great since it can invade, raid and gets the special israeli Silk Road buildings. Better to be a Muslim religiously. You get your holy wars for expansion, polygamy for tons of sons and merchant republics don’t get decadence.
Yazidi in particular is great if you can manage it, since if you can become the Sheik you can just excommunicate your enemies on top of the normal Muslim benefits.
Of course, being Catholic can let you more easily play the Pope colonization game, which can be fun and very powerful.
Starting as a Catholic Khazar and later converting up Yazidi through a holy site once you get the dynastic popes self-sufficient might be interesting.
Muslim Merchant Republics also get Jizya from trade ports in non-muslim lands, for even more LODESEMONEY
Run this off Socotra or convert to Judaism for the memes
Spam posts
Spam cities
Buy mercs
Buy every election win
It's the single most braindead government form to play in CK2
How do I build trade posts in other countries?
Click on a coastal county in diplo range that you can access via water from your capital. It's in the additional holdings tab, the same place as hospitals. If one's already built, obviously you cannot build a new one.
This.
Literally the only nuance is the number of male dynasty members in your court. The more you have, the higher the trade post cap. But the more you have, then more you have to split income.
The solution is to keep a small number until you upgrade your mansion and trade practices tech. Then shit out as many possible and built like 30-ish trade posts. Then crop the dynasty tightly so all that income is only being split 3-4 ways max.
Merchant Port is more valuable than Merchant Enclave, I think. It probably doesn't really matter that much though. Just build the dumb trade posts and you make money
Just start playing and figure it out yourself. Why do zoomies have to be spoonfed?
money
Heh, I just saw your post on Ganker
always keep every other major house head dead/imprison, this is trivial with intrigue focus which should always be on until every head is dead/in jail/a minor. When House morono is led by a 2 year old with no heirs then switch to Business/Rulership or do learning to bloatmaxx your stats with Hermetics
Do not kill the last noble house lead unless your position is strong because the AI generates a replacement house with more heirs you'll have to play Whack-a-Mole with
>this braindead shit is what CK2 chuds cry about CK3 not having
fricking lmao
All of CK2 is brain-dead. And so is 3. The point is about having merchant republics or at least being able to play as a republic, period, rather than "nu-uh, not this time", except in 3-5 years they are going to shit out some horrendous DLC that's going to break the game in five different ways.
Trade routes and merchant republics can be fun, even when you aren’t playing as one yourself. Hopefully they do update CK3 to have something along those lines eventually, though until then at least there are mods.
CK2 always annoyed me due to moronic idea that every city state = Venice and that you MUST be at the very least a duke to pull this in the first place. It was so fricking arbitrary and so naval centric... what if you want to play a fricking imperial city, then? Or just a city-state from any place that wasn't coastal Italy?
> Fund the other houses
> Watch them build trading ports
> Hunt the other house members to extinction
> Inherit their trading ports
> Repeat
>no naval combat
pathetic
>still seething over the dumbest element of any given PDX game
The last thing CK series needs is "muh naval combat"
this, look how hard eu4 devs have tried to make naval work for the past decade and failed. even hoi4 fails at doing naval combat right (albeit that game SHOULD have it in, time to pay another $20 down the line in a few years paradrones for us to rework it AGAIN). crusader kings doesn't need naval combat, but it does need boats, no magic "embark" like ck3
Turns out it is outrageously boring and easy. Every problem is solved by infinite money and mercs. You only concern is forgetting to put money into elections which are dumb and stupid. I hated that gameplay.
>You only concern is forgetting to put money into elections
How the frick are you this bad at CK2? No matter who you're playing the "you are going to lose titles when you die" notification is the second most urgent to "no heir of your dynasty"
bump
Play as the Byzantines, they’re basically a military republic.
there are so many people I've seen complain over the years about their government type not knowing that it lets you own cities. that's so absurdly broken because you basically get infinite money for mercenaries
Imperial has some annoying restrictions but being able to hold cities lets you just throw money around and buy out any problem.
I somewhat prefer Chinese Imperial. Not being able to demand conversion or use religious mandate is a shame but ignoring religion opinion penalties even for marriage is stellar, they make particularly good Muslims since then you can more securely keep Jizya on all the cities you own. It can get pretty boring though by the point you can do that.
can Chinese Imperial educate children into your religion?
>be Yazidi (Muslim heresy)
>excommunicate all the other patricians as a secular ruler (Caliph) and you can imprison and execute for no penalty. do this to either exterminate their families or so that their families have a child as an heir. a child cannot become Doge
>when you kill them and they're the last of their family left you have a chance of stealing their trade posts. as they are excommunicated no one cares
>break the game
works the best on the silk road as either israeli religion, Israelite culture group, or Khazar culture. but you should get to the silk road asap anyway for infinite money
Just found my next campaign
>start as Khazar Khanate
>breed Sayyiid trait into my family while I still have matrilineal marriage
>conquer Jerusalem and settle as a republic in the area
>hold it long enough as a non-Muslim to trigger Jihads as it's one of their "oh shit our land is being taken" triggers (year 900+)
>immediately become Yazidi Muslim off the holy site there
>get their Caliphate title
>break the game due to being able to excommunicate, having Jihads, having Radhanite trade posts, Jizya tax, and Khazar culture being able to raid
unfortunately I'm pretty sure you can't build trade posts in both oceans
You don’t actually need Sayyid to become the Yazidi sheik, you just need 1000 piety and to control Mossul. However you might as well grab Sayyid and some other bloodlines anyway while you still have religion ignoring matrilineal marriage shenanigans as a Nomad.
>break the game due to being able to excommunicate, having Jihads, having Radhanite trade posts, Jizya tax, and Khazar culture being able to raid
Don’t forget polygamy for tons of children.
Become one of gods chosen
Just play, 90 percent of the fun is not knowing mechanics 100 percent so you have more varied playthroughs, I played the frick out of ck2 and every game goes the same now.